Under the Net by Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch is one of the handful of writers who I return to with regular irregularity. Like Graham Greene, VirginiaContinue Reading
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Love, Sex & Other Foreign Policy Goals by Jesse Armstrong
Until yesterday, when I read the last 100 pages of Jesse Armstrong’s Love, Sex & Other Foreign Policy Goals, IContinue Reading
October Ferry To Gabriola by Malcolm Lowry
As I continue to read through the (surprisingly) ever-expanding oeuvre of the alcoholic, depressive, late-Modernist writer, Malcolm Lowry, I amContinue Reading
Kolymsky Heights by Lionel Davidson
So, am back in London and have a little over an hour in which to wash, shave, iron clothes, cleanContinue Reading
The Dispossessed by Ursula le Guin
I don’t really understand what is the fucking point of this dull novel. Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed is aContinue Reading
Eva Luna by Isabel Allende
Last night, as I wandered between bars and cafes in Taksim, North of the Golden Horn, I read most ofContinue Reading
The Diamond Smugglers by Ian Fleming
I’m writing this on an aeroplane to Istanbul, off for a “mimibreak”*. Treating myself to a trip, all on myContinue Reading
The Sugar Syndrome by Lucy Prebble
I haven’t read a play for a while. I used to read plays all the time, it was one ofContinue Reading
9th and 13th by Jonathan Coe
I picked this up a while ago from a secondhand bookshop somewhere, shortly after reading Jonathan Coe’s Like A FieryContinue Reading
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (The Omnibus Edition) by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill
I hadn’t read a graphic novel/comic book in a while, so thought I’d have a go with one of theContinue Reading
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
Well, it is good. It’s good. It’s possibly great, but it’s definitely good. Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend is basicallyContinue Reading
A Russian Journal by John Steinbeck
I’m going on a trip to Russia in about six weeks, so have begun my travel research. Unlike normal people,Continue Reading
Victoria by Knut Hamsun
I know I should be spending my free time writing something that isn’t this blog. I know I should haveContinue Reading
How To Use Your Enemies by Baltasar Gracián
I decided to read another one of the tiny little Penguin Classics. This one, How To Use Your Enemies byContinue Reading
Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon
Sometimes I read novels where I can’t really see why they were written. Novels that say very little to meContinue Reading
Viper Wine by Hermione Eyre
I often state that me taking more than a week to read anything, irrelevant of size, is a sign thatContinue Reading
A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing by Eimear McBride
Eimear McBride’s A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing was a surprise critical smash in the heady days of 2013/14, atContinue Reading
Audition by Ryu Murakami
I haven’t read a novel by the “other” Murakami for years. In my long and distant and pre-blogging past, IContinue Reading
My Day Trip with Knausgaard
A few weeks ago I went for a day trip, alone, with Karl Ove Knausgaard’s Dancing Is The Dark. Here’sContinue Reading
Mrs Rosie and the Priest by Giovanni Boccaccio
I don’t know if anyone else likes little books as much as I do, but I’ve been particularly charmed recentlyContinue Reading
The Tongues of Men or Angels by Jonathan Trigell
I like Biblical novels. So much so that I wrote one*, and so much so that after reading about ten/twenty,Continue Reading
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
A very easy way of gauging how much I’ve enjoyed a book is how long it takes me to readContinue Reading
Getting Colder by Amanda Coe
Getting Colder by Amanda Coe is a great, contemporary novel. It is fun, quite haunting in places and it isContinue Reading
Dancing in the Dark: My Struggle Book Four by Karl Ove Knausgaard
For the past four years, the big literary release (for me) has been the continuing publication of Karl Ove Knausgaard’sContinue Reading
Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre is another one of those hip, nihilistic-type novelists than whiney, depressive young men read in-between bouts of binge-drinkingContinue Reading
The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth
The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth was a surprising literary hit of 2014. Not a “literary hit” in that it soldContinue Reading
The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters
I thoroughly enjoyed The Paying Guests, which was a relief as the last book I read was DIRE. I’d neverContinue Reading
Byron Easy by Jude Cook
Byron Easy by Jude Cook is the least enjoyable book I’ve read in ages, and the first one I haveContinue Reading
In Ballast to the White Sea (A Scholarly Edition) by Malcolm Lowry
The biggest tragedy in Malcolm Lowry’s life (in his own opinion) was when the lakeside shack he lived in burnedContinue Reading
In The Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (À la recherche du temps perdu 2) by Marcel Proust
Volume 2 of Marcel Proust’s giant novel, In Search of Lost Time, is a joy to read. I don’t knowContinue Reading
Molloy by Samuel Beckett
I’m going to be honest, I did not get what the point of Molloy was. Oooh, it was Beckettian; itContinue Reading
The Birds by Tarjei Vesaas
Obnoxiously (the manner in which I do most things), I read Tarjei Vesaas’ The Birds because Karl Ove Knausgaard refersContinue Reading
The Minister of Evil – The Secret History of Rasputin’s Betrayal of Russia by William Le Queux
The Minister of Evil: The Secret History of Rasputin’s Betrayal of Russia is a very strange book. I read itContinue Reading
Green Girl by Kate Zambreno
I have read Kate Zambreno’s Green Girl for my book club, and will now write a review in two parts.Continue Reading
The Great War by Joe Sacco
Joe Sacco’s wordless, 8 metre long panorama of the first day of the Battle of the Somme is a harrowingContinue Reading
A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf’s famous non-fiction treatise on ‘Women and Fiction’, A Room of One’s Own, is an embarrassingly prescient text aboutContinue Reading
10:04 by Ben Lerner
Well, I just wrote a huge, gushing review of this and then my computer crashed and deleted it. So, withContinue Reading
The Chairs Are Where the People Go by Misha Glouberman with Sheila Heti
The Chairs Are Where The People Go is a strange book, and a highly-acclaimed one. It’s semi-written by Sheila Heti, authorContinue Reading
Life, End of by Christine Brooke-Rose
Well, this is a rather painfully depressing read. Life, End of was Christine Brooke-Rose’s final novel, one written in herContinue Reading
Stamboul Train by Graham Greene
I don’t really feel I need to hide it any more – I love the novels of Graham Greene. ThisContinue Reading
I Don’t Need You Any More by Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller’s 1967 collection of stories, I Don’t Need You Any More, contains one of the finest pieces of short fictionContinue Reading
Preacher: Book One by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon
I first read about Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s comic Preacher at the 2014 British Library exhibition, Comics Unmasked. OfContinue Reading
The Abominable Goat by Stephen Lister
The Abominable Goat by Stephen Lister is a truly odd novel, and one that arrived in my possession in aContinue Reading
Penguin Modern Poets 25
Other than having an excellent cover, this 1975 collection of poems by Gavin Ewart, Zulfikar Ghose and B. S. JohnsonContinue Reading
The Last Summer by Boris Pasternak
Boris Pasternak was the author of Doctor Zhivago, which I didn’t realise when I picked up this slim novella aboutContinue Reading
Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf
Both the blurb and the author biography of my 1980s edition of Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf state that thisContinue Reading
Justine by Marquis de Sade
Last night I cut my hand in several places on a broken champagne flute, and to recuperate took myself offContinue Reading
Jerusalem the Golden by Margaret Drabble
Margaret Drabble is not a novelist I’ve read before. To be honest, I’m mainly aware of her for being withinContinue Reading
Endgame by Samuel Beckett
Like most pretentious teenagers who go on to study English Literature as an undergraduate then sink into an unhappy morassContinue Reading
ABC of Reading by Ezra Pound
I’ve never gotten on well with Ezra Pound’s poems. Though a staple within the pretentious anthologies I used to readContinue Reading
Triumph Of The Now 